Thursday, November 27, 2008

For our Thanksgiving feast, I used my NuWave oven!!! I cooked both the sweet potatoes and the turkey in one shot! Wahoo! Here is my 3 lb butter ball turkey. It cooked in 75 mins. How great is that? With only two real meat eaters out of eight people, this was perfect!

Stuffing, turkey, gravy, sweet corn, cranberries (with powdered sugar), and candied yams! (Oh, and pasta for those of us who think that the innocent slaughter of a helpless caged turkey for human pleasure is disgusting and appalling. I just can't help myself, its not Thanksgiving unless I've said my peace for my PETA peeps!)

Thanks be to the good Lord above for our family and friends, each of whom are loved dearly.

Time to get to eatin'!

Ummm...we seem to have an uninvited guest! LOL! Jinx is smelling that turkey!!!

Friday, November 21, 2008

As many of my fellow bloggers will certainly agree, there are so many great snap shots of our daily lives that never make it onto our blogs for various reasons. Perhaps they are not related to an event, in particular. Or maybe they are from events that was simply passed over. Even more likely, they are just one of a million photos taken throughout our busy days that just seem to get filed away, never given the chance to show the world their worth.

While putting the photos together for our yearly family album, I came across many such photos. So, I thought I would create a post to show off a small portion of these undisplayed treasures.

When I made the leap to home school, I was concerned about cutting out all of the extra opportunities offered through our traditional brick and mortar public school, like art, music, field trips, clubs, etc. But, perhaps my greatest concern was the social aspect. In an effort to avoid any such negative effects, we joined a local homeschool coop. For our part, Kevin and I teach a monthly Science club.

The past three months have been spent studying swamps and wet lands. To conclude this unit, Kevin took the group to the Okefenokee Swamp. Although I stayed behind with the little monkeys, he did an excellent job with the camera!

The whole group participated in an animal introduction class, where they were allowed to touch the various reptiles.

For the slightly more brave, you could hold some of the animals in the exhibit with a little help. Kaelyn almost appears to be snuggling with the animal handler! LOL!

And then, there are the total dare devils. Ashlyn held that snake solo!

Everyone went on the train ride around the park. They were able to see the otters, alligators, turtles, and other swamp creatures from a very safe distance.

And then my crazy husband took them on a canoe ride through the swamp! Yikes! They had alligators swimming around them! Now, I get that I am city folk and all, but really? How safe does that sound?